Deterioration, drift, distraction, and denial: How the politics of austerity challenges the resilience of prison health governance and delivery in England.

ABSTRACT: Extant scholarship has demonstrated that macroeconomic austerity disproportionately harms marginalised end-users. Its impact on the governance and delivery of health provisions on such individuals, however, has received less attention. Drawing on interviews with 27 policy elites involved with England's prison health policy, interviewees perceive that austerity policies have shaped and constrained the prison health system through the politics of deterioration, drift, distraction, and denial. The deterioration of the prison workforce size has been linked to diminished prisoner access to healthcare, attendant with an increased number of riots, assaults, acts of self-harm, and suicides. Concurrently, the microeconomic structure of organised crime is filling the void in prison governance, thus

SUBMITTER: Ismail N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7505109 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature